


On The Incomplete, Obscure Arcanum Of The Heart

by pipistrelle



Category: Critical Hit (Podcast), Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Character Study, Eladrin Are Terrible At Everything, Established Relationship, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kammis Has Difficulty Processing How Gay She is, Magic, Mysterious Pre-Canon Shadowfell Adventures, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 04, Stagzi's a little shit and I love him, The World Is Changing And Love Will Change It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 17:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17430500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: "’The defining quality of an enchantment,’ the grimoire reads in Lady Shimmerwing's translation, ‘being that it obscures the target's awareness of its operation. A sentient creature who is levitated, petrified, poisoned, or healed is certainly aware of the fact, so long as cognitive processes persist; the same creature targeted by an enchantment (in the classical sense of the term) is magically prevented from realizing that they are under any magical effect at all.’”Kammis Rivendorn, heiress to eladrin royalty and renowned arcanist, really only has one method for understanding new input: she opens to a blank chapter in her spellbook and starts taking notes.(As always seems to happen in this brave bold new world of adventuring, she ends up with much more than she bargained for.)





	On The Incomplete, Obscure Arcanum Of The Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is my magnum opus. This story is my heart. It's been like two or three years in the writing, as I've dabbled with it on and off, rewritten parts and moved them around. For the New Year I decided to go through old files and see what could be spruced up and posted, and found the entire folder dedicated to drafts of this story. It's probably not as good as it could be, but if I don't post it now I never will, and I've loved it too long to let it languish in the dark.
> 
> Probably no one will read it, since there's like three people in this fandom and season four was like ten years ago, but neither art nor love is stayed by such petty concerns. So here you go. <3

******0. _divination_**

Broadly speaking, eladrin magic doesn't put much stock in prognostication because in well-bred and well-heeled eladrin society the future is expected to be very much like the past. By their second or third century of life, nearly all eladrin are wise enough to recognize that the capricious changeability of the Feywild is itself unchanging, that chaos is actually a constant, and the patterns asserting themselves now are the same ones that have asserted themselves before and will again. Even what appears to be a drastic departure from the norm always turns out to be, in the proper context of millennia, well within expected parameters.

Master Rivendorn's study holds family records stretching back before the departure of the elves and drow. By the time Kammis is ten years old she knows the story of a Rivendorn heir; the first step is education at the Cerulean Academy, the most prestigious institution in the Spring Wood, and Kammis graduates first in her class. Next is a return to the family estate and development of her arcane specialty, leading to innovations that may cause some controversy in learned circles but will lead eventually to an Academy professorship or some other position of prominence among the well-bred families. Eventually, in a few hundred years perhaps, a socially advantageous marriage and the continuance of the Rivendorn line.

If it hadn't been for the murders, that's exactly what might have happened.

 

  **i. _conjuration_**

The first time Kammis loses a familiar, she cries for three days. She is fourteen years old and too proud to let her distress be seen, but there's no disguising the empty air on her shoulder where her bristle-furred bat-winged homunculus should be. Master Silverthorn, who teaches the course in conjuration, glares sternly at her all through classes, and after a week he calls her to his office and asks why she hasn't summoned a new one. 

She doesn't say, "Because I loved him." Instead she looks up at Master Silverthorn, who is at least five hundred years old and has summoned lich dragons, mighty elementals, and even (the rumor goes) demons who bowed and let him set his immaculately-polished boot heel on their necks. All through the theoretical part of the course she'd dreamed about that kind of power, of commanding the most formidable creatures of every plane to build towers in her name, vanquish armies, topple mountains.

Then Fuzzy had crawled out of the summoning circle and she'd picked up his misshapen little body, cleaned the interplanar phlogiston off the membranes of his awkwardly large wings, listened to his soft chitter of inquiry, and realized that there was more to conjuration than towers and armies and lich dragons.

She looks up at Master Silverthorn and says, "I haven't decided what kind of creature to summon next, sir. I want to give it a lot of thought."

He nods. "I see. That is wise. I thought you had grown overly attached to your first conjuration -- it often happens to new summoners. But of course Brall Rivendorn's child would know better. As for the matter of a new familiar, some sort of psuedodragon would suit your needs best, I should think. I can recommend some texts on the subject."

Two days later Kammis summons a leaf-green psuedodragon that she wears draped over her left shoulder, its tail wrapped around her neck for balance. She doesn't give it a name. When it gets disintegrated by a cracked energy-storage crystal six months later, she thinks _Brall Rivendorn's child should know better_ and hardly cries at all.

 

**ii. _conjuration (advanced)_**

By the time she reaches the natural world, she's lost half a dozen familiars and learned how to mostly not feel the hollow ache that lingers for a week or so after the initial shock of death. But the last fight was a bad one, and she's still reeling a little from the loss when she rounds a corner and sees an elf with bright green hair and black streaks on her face lecturing a dazed-looking human boy. The boy is clutching one end of a rope; the other end is tied around the neck of a mangy half-grown mongrel dog.

As Kammis comes around the corner, the elf is saying "-- and it doesn't matter how nice you are to him, if he's kept tied up all the time then he never has any choice whether he wants to be with you or not, and he's an animal, he needs to be free to hunt and play and find a pack he can belong to --"

"Excuse me," Kammis says to the elf. The boy transfers his blank stare to her. "I think you might have better luck in Common."

"What?" The elf whirls around. "What are you talking about? I --" she stops, realizes she's still speaking Elven, and squawks in frustration. She turns around again but the boy and dog are halfway down the street. "I definitely _started_ in Common," she says, still in Elven. "I guess I got worked up and forgot."

She suddenly seems to realize Kammis is there and turns to stare at her. It's an unsettling experience. Kammis hasn't felt so closely scrutinized since her Academy days, although this inspection has a lot less malice and a lot more curiosity behind it. "You're an eladrin, aren't you?"

"Yes," Kammis says, and if anything the elf's stare intensifies. The black paint on her face and the green of her hair accentuate the contrast between the black and green in her eyes -- it's a little unsettling, like all non-eladrin eyes, but also strangely fascinating.

"Do they have this where you come from?" she demands, throwing out her arm in what Kammis takes to be a broad condemnation of civilization until she realizes that it's actually a specific gesture indicating a draft horse hitched to a wagon on the other side of the street. "This -- this _slavery_?"

Humans are stopping to stare. They probably don't understand the words, but a shouting green-haired elf is apparently unusual enough to attract attention. "I don't think," Kammis starts, but the elf grabs her hand to march her over to the wagon and the touch is so unexpected that it takes her a moment to recover, at which point there's an explosion down the street, and then they're running and one thing leads to another and they don't revisit the subject of the subjugation of animals for several weeks.

When they do revisit the subject it's because Trelle gets into a drunken fistfight with a stablemaster, and it's not the time or place to discuss the intricacies of contractual obedience involved in summoning, so Kammis doesn't. By then the residual aches of her last familiar's death have fully faded, and with all the excitement of meeting Stagzi and Trelle she doesn't even really miss the faithful presence on her shoulder.

She intends to summon a new familiar. She thinks about it every once in a while, and a few times she even starts gathering the ritual components, wondering vaguely what kind of imp or elemental she should try to call, but something always draws her attention before she decides. And it seems like Trelle is always there, staring with exactly the same intensity of fascination that she did the day they met, and the more time goes on the harder it becomes to imagine telling Trelle what the circle of runes and incense would be for, and then it's been six months and Kammis finds herself fighting her way across the Shadowfell at half-strength because she doesn't have a familiar to channel her power through.

That night she stares at the blank canvas wall of her tent, trying to meditate, but all she can see in her mind's eye is the craggy gray face of Master Silverthorn. _Why haven't you summoned a new one?_ he demands, and she doesn't have an answer for him. She isn't still grieving her last familiar's death. She has all the knowledge and materials she needs. And yet --

Trelle murmurs and stirs. She's taken to sleeping in Kammis' tent lately, and in the last few weeks she's fallen asleep more often than not with her head pillowed on Kammis' thigh. It's easier; she doesn't have horrible Shadowfell-induced nightmares this way, and Kammis is less prone to draining visions of numbness and loss. It's perfectly practical.

And yet.

 _Overly attached_ , Master Silverthorn sneers in her memory. _Brall Rivendorn's child should know better._

Kammis rests a hand on Trelle's shoulder and makes no reply.

 

 **iii.** **_enchantment_ **

The third volume of _Grelusa's Grimoires_ contains what is considered by most arcane scholars to be the definitive essay on magical effects that charm, hypnotize, or enthrall sentient beings. "The defining quality of such an effect," it reads in Lady Shimmerwing's translation, "being that it obscures the target's awareness of its operation. A sentient creature who is levitated, petrified, poisoned, or healed is certainly aware of the fact, so long as cognitive processes persist; the same creature targeted by an enchantment (in the classical sense of the term) is magically prevented from realizing that they are under any magical effect at all."

The third volume of the _Grimoires_ was assigned periodically to all students across all disciplines at the Academy. In the Feywild, a detailed understanding of the mechanisms of glamour is often a matter of life and death. (Or a matter of life and the eternal twilight of fey-enthralled unlife.) Kammis had it memorized by the time she was seventeen, although she's never been particularly afraid of that fate. Avoiding the snare of glamour is a matter of self-possession and excellent wards, and she has always felt confident in her mastery of both.

Which might be why it takes her so long to understand what's happening with Trelle.

In an open-air market in a human city somewhere on the eastern coast, Kammis is assigned to keep Stagzi out of trouble while the others go shopping for new swords. She takes the opportunity to further her research. “Stagzi,” she says, “have I changed much? In the time you’ve known me?”

“Oh, certainly,” Stagzi answers. He doesn’t seem particularly ruffled at having a babysitter, although maybe that’s because Kammis isn’t very good at it. He’s already stolen a few trinkets and an inattentive clerk’s wide-brimmed hat, which now has two holes in it from being jammed down over his horns. “When I first met you, you were entirely insufferable. Now you are… very nearly sufferable.”

When Kammis doesn’t react, he follows her gaze to the other side of the market, where Trelle is attempting to coax a mangy, flea-bitten, extremely displeased feral cat out from under a butcher’s cart. “Ah,” Stagzi says softly. “Perhaps you are referring to the way our elf has cast her spell over you?”

“I don’t think it is a spell,” Kammis says vaguely. “It might be easier if it was.”

“Undoubtedly. But these things are not supposed to be easy. Tell me, do eladrin have much in the way of romantic poetry?”

“Eladrin poetry is generally very… stylized. If you’re interested I can lend you a scroll of Altair Winterloam’s morality sonnets, but I don’t think you’d like them. Why?”

Stagzi says, “For such an intelligent person, sometimes I feel there are serious gaps in your education. I think it is time I lent _you_ a few scrolls.”

“I was educated at the finest magical academy in the Feywild.”

“I do not doubt it.” Stagzi takes her arm, tucks it in his and pats her hand. “Come with me. I will answer all your questions.”

He drags her into a damp, moldy little shop packed with scrolls and arcane tomes, where he spends an hour and a half haggling with the wizened proprietor over the price of a couple of outdated maps. As they step out into the sunshine again he slips a book that he definitely did not haggle for out of his pocket and into Kammis' hand. "Study this," he tells her. "I think you will find it enlightening."

The book is small, hardly bigger than her hand, with a cracked leather cover and yellowing hand-lettered pages. It is, as he promised, poetry -- in Common, mostly, with a few Elven phrases. Kammis skims it as they retrace their steps. "This is nonsense," she says.

"Maybe. Maybe not. There is one in there that begins 'the glamour that does not bind', that one might interest you. Try not to judge so quickly."

The book is hardly fifty pages, but Kammis follows Stagzi's suggestion and takes her time with it. The Elven is badly conjugated and the penmanship leaves much to be desired, but after the second time through she starts to realize that there is something in it worth knowing after all. She's still reading it when they leave the city and head up into the hills again three days later. She is reading it alone in her tent on the night Trelle goes out on a hunt, gets caught in a cloudburst and comes back  to Kammis' tent soaked to the skin. "Can you do that thing you do, where you use rocks instead of a fire?" Trelle asks, shivering, and without really coming out of the book Kammis starts gathering stones and enchanting them to hold heat, and then she turns around and Trelle has stripped off her sopping armor and under-layers and is standing there staring, her brown skin ruffled with gooseflesh, all whipcord muscle and easy grace, more beautiful than anything Kammis has ever seen. _The glamour that does not bind_ is in Kammis' throat and on her tongue and it's a miracle that the poetry doesn't pour out of her like a river in flood cresting a dam no longer high enough to hold it back.

Instead she hands Trelle a spare dry cloak and says "Stay here tonight," and it feels like stepping off the marked path to strike a bargain with something she's been warned against her whole life, and it feels like poetry, and it feels like magic.

 

**iv. _necromancy_**

The portal feels like an iron fist squeezing the air and life out of her; for a black second she is crushed into a splinter, a single point, and then she stumbles onto solid earth and falls to her knees. There's grass under her hands, cool and alien to the touch. The green of it dazzles her. The sky is so blue it hurts to look at. She closes her eyes, gasps and almost chokes as the clean air burns in her throat and chest, both sore and scraped from months of breathing in dust. Her mouth is still coated with dust, gritty and cloying. She wishes for water, and as soon as the thought forms someone tugs at her hand, wrapping it around something leathery. Kammis' fingers recognize the spout of a waterskin, and she drinks greedily, feeling like she'd never known what clean water tasted like until now -- or maybe she'd forgotten.

The waterskin is pulled away. Kammis risks opening her eyes again. The colors of the living world are still painfully intense after the infinite gray of the Shadowfell, but she's adjusted enough that it doesn't make her sick to look at the sky and the grass. The portal seems to have dropped them in a meadow somewhere, a lush carpet of pale spring grasses, with a few dandelions bobbing their golden heads in the sunlight. Farther off she can see a line of trees casting their dappled shadows over a stream. It's all so beautiful, for a moment she's sure it isn't real; that this is the realm after death and that other plane of dust and shadows was the reality of life.

Then she turns her head and sees Trelle, putting the cap back on the waterskin and stowing it away. She looks like a ghost. Kammis is seized by a creeping horror that Trelle came back a shade, one of those wretched, pitiable things that populate the realm of the dead with imitations of the motions of life. Then she realizes that it's just the gray dust of the Shadowfell coating her skin and clothes that makes her look bleached and insubstantial.

Kammis glances down at her own hands and clothes, sees them turned the same flat gray. "We made it," she croaks. Trelle stares at her. Kammis imagines how she must look and without thinking puts a hand to the braid hanging over her shoulder, feeling the grit in it. "My hair --"

Trelle tackles her. Kammis hits the ground with Trelle on top of her, feels Trelle's shoulders shaking and thinks that she might be crying -- or laughing, it's hard to tell. "Your _hair_ ," she chokes out, and now she's definitely laughing, her face pressed against Kammis' shoulder, crushing Kammis' ribcage with arms strong enough to put an arrow clean through a giant's skull. Even as Kammis fights to breathe she's aware of a tingling warmth wherever Trelle's skin touches hers, as though her whole body has been numbed asleep and is having sensation forced back into it for the first time in an age. It's almost painful, but she's desperately disappointed when Trelle lets her go, springs up and dashes across the meadow.

Kammis climbs shakily to her feet and sees another pair of ghosts -- Bellica leaning over Stagzi, who has both hands over his ruined face. Trelle throws her arms around Bellica for a heartbeat, then drops to her knees and pulls Stagzi close. She guides his head down to rest on her shoulder and strokes his hair, carefully avoiding the stump of his horn. Kammis staggers over and kneels beside Stagzi, cautiously resting a hand on his back. "It's okay," Trelle is saying. "We made it. Kammis got us out. Everything's gonna be okay."

"We made it?" Stagzi lifts his head, almost skewering Trelle on his remaining horn, and stares blankly around at the meadow, the trees, the stream. "We made it."

Bellica gasps at the sight of his face and turns aside. Kammis winces and murmurs a spell. It takes the last of her strength, but it heals the worst of the damage, drying out and cleaning the deepest burns. "Welcome back," she says when he turns to focus his good eye on her.

"Back from death to the land of the living." He smiles, and Kammis is relieved to see that beneath the exhaustion and pain there's still a hint of his buoyant, irrepressible charm in it. "You've mastered necromancy, I see. Perhaps I should have let that creature remove my head, and you could have brought me back as my old beautiful self? I would have to wear scarves, of course."

"Stagzi!"

He turns his smile on Trelle, patting her cheek with a shaking hand. "Don't worry, dear heart, I'm only joking. Though not about the scarves. What do you think? A scarf over the head, perhaps, like bandits wear? Or maybe a hat?"

"We'll get you a hat," Trelle says firmly. "The most beautiful hat they have."

"Then I am content." He tries to stand, falls back, and lets Trelle haul him up and sling one of his arms over her shoulders, taking most of his weight.

Kammis stands as well. For a heartbeat her field of vision narrows and darkens, like she's about to fall through another portal, and she feels herself sway and start to topple over, then jerk to a stop. She glances down to see Trelle's free hand gripping her tattered robes, keeping her upright.

"Bellica, find a path," Trelle orders. Kammis doesn't see where Bellica goes, but she is aware of Trelle towing her forward with dogged strength, moving her even though her legs feel like jelly.

She glances at Stagzi over Trelle's head and meets his eye. His skin is a pale, unhealthy grayish-purple, but he still has a hint of a smile. "You got us back from death," he murmurs, "but she'll drag us back to life, hmm?"

"Yes, I will, and it'll be easier if you're conscious, so shut up," Trelle commands. Stagzi and Kammis obey.

 

**v. _evocation_**

"There is nothing we can do," Stagzi says.

"Yes, there is." Trelle takes a step forward and holds out her hand to the unicorn. It snuffles at her palm, then turns its head to try and look at her, but the coin-sized golden eyes with their horizontal pupils are cloudy and unseeing. It shifts its weight, pulling against the cold iron spikes in the trap closed around its hind legs, and the scabbed-over wounds break open and start to bleed sluggishly again in rivulets of silver.

Trelle takes another step, well inside the range of the spiraling violet horn, still vibrant and lethal despite the animal's weakness. She places one hand on its chest, ruffling the snow-white fur hanging loose off the emaciated ribs. The top of her head barely comes to its shoulder. As it drops its head, seemingly too exhausted to hold it up, Kammis is intently aware that the horn could skewer at least two or three of them. Even hobbled, starved, and on the edge of death, the unicorn is breathtakingly beautiful, seeming to shine with a vitality that Kammis interprets as danger.

If Trelle is afraid, she doesn't show it. She stands on tiptoe and speaks into the unicorn's ear. It tilts its head, listening, then closes its eyes. Trelle draws her scimitar.

"No!" Kammis hisses. "You'll be cursed!" She darts forward, trying to grab Trelle's arm. Without dropping her scimitar Trelle twists around the unicorn's head, catches Kammis by one shoulder and flips her effortlessly onto her back. The impact knocks the wind out of her, but she struggles to sit up again, wheezing between gasps. "The curse -- whoever takes -- the life --"

"I'm a Twilight Guardian," Trelle says in a toneless voice. "I know how to do this. Don't worry." The unicorn hasn't moved, hasn't even opened its eyes. In a single fluid motion Trelle draws the sharp edge of her scimitar across its throat.

The blood is bright silver and soon stops. Trelle holds onto the massive head as the unicorn's body sags and goes limp. She sets it down gently on the grass and kneels beside it, murmuring again into the snow-white ear. Then she stands and slashes open the palm of her left hand on the tip of its horn. Kammis hears her say very softly, in Elven, "Blood for blood."

By the time Kammis gets her breath back Trelle has worked the trap free of the unicorn's hind legs and dragged it around the body to show the others. It's a cruel thing; a set of interlocking jaws in concentric circles, jagged with cold iron teeth, now slick and mercurial with unicorn blood. Looking at it makes Kammis feel queasy, because of the purpose of the thing or the proximity of cold iron, she can't tell.

Stagzi takes a cautious step forward, intent on examining the trap, though he stays well away from Trelle and the unicorn. "Certainly an…unusual thing," he ventures cautiously.

"I've seen one before, back home. Whoever takes the life of a unicorn is cursed. But if a _thing_ takes the life of a unicorn, then nobody's cursed, right?"

"The cold iron probably helps dispel any lingering fey magic," Kammis says.

"Would that work? The one you saw before -- was that person cursed?"

"He wished he was when our bands caught him." Trelle looks at Stagzi and makes a vague prying gesture. "I need your -- those things you use for locks."

Stagzi hands over a small packet. Trelle sits down and methodically pries the iron teeth out of their sockets. Stagzi winces at the damage she's undoubtedly doing to his sensitive equipment, but he doesn't dare say anything. The sick, bleak anger in her face is terrifying.

When she's pried out the last spike she sweeps the pile into her bag. The rest of the trap is made of wood, and she drops it beside the unicorn's head. She stands with her head bowed a moment, looking at the body that seems beautiful and awe-inspiring even as a ruined corpse, then turns on her heel and walks off into the woods.

She doesn't speak the rest of that day. They make camp beside a stream in the forest, and as soon as they have the bedrolls set up Trelle shoulders her bow and disappears.

Kammis doesn't see her again until well past midnight. She steps over to the stream, thinking to wash some arcane residue off her hands, and as she straightens up she turns her head and sees Trelle sitting on the bank. Her bow and quiver are on the ground beside her, and her knees are pulled up to her chest. As Kammis takes a cautious step closer she can see the tears streaming down her cheeks, glinting silver in the moonlight.

"Hey," Kammis says softly.

Trelle sniffles and scrubs at her nose with one sleeve. As she lowers her arm Kammis catches sight of the cut from the unicorn's horn, ugly and half-scabbed over. "Give me that," she says, moving closer and holding her hand out, but she stops short of touching Trelle's arm. "You didn't even wrap it."

Trelle sighs and extends her arm. Kammis sits cross-legged beside her and traces an arcane gesture in the air with one hand. After a moment her satchel comes floating through the midnight gloom and settles beside her like a tame bird. She pulls out a waterskin and cloth and cleans the wound, then presses a poultice into it and wraps the whole thing in a clean white bandage that goes over Trelle's palm, between her fingers and halfway up her forearm, obscuring the furthest leaves of her tattoo. "There," she says, smoothing the edge of the bandage down and weaving it into itself with a cantrip.

"Thanks," Trelle says. Her voice is rough from crying. She flexes her fingers experimentally, then grasps Kammis' hands in both of hers. "I'm sorry about before. Did I hurt you?"

"No," Kammis lies. The twinge in her ribs will be gone by tomorrow and she doesn't need to make Trelle feel worse. "I'm sorry, too. I should have trusted that you knew what you were doing. It's just, in the Feywild, we grow up hearing stories about the horrible things that happen to --"

Trelle flings herself onto Kammis and wraps both arms around her waist, squeezing with all her strength. "I know. You were worried about me. It was really sweet," she says, and bursts into tears.

Kammis rests one hand between Trelle's shoulderblades and strokes her hair with the other. Trelle isn't making much noise, but Kammis can feel her shaking with ugly, wracking sobs, the kind that take every muscle in your body and feel like you're drowning. With a sudden stab she remembers the last time she cried like that -- huddled over the pile of dust that was all that was left of Fuzzy's broken little body, ten years ago in another world. There had been no one to hold her then, no one she would have wanted to hold her and stroke her hair even if she could have borne the shame of telling them how devastated she was. But Trelle has no shame about showing weakness, and clings to Kammis for dear life.

Slowly the storm subsides, and Trelle's shuddering breaths even out. She stays in the circle of Kammis' arms for a long time, her cheek pressed to Kammis' chest, breathing deeply and letting Kammis stroke her hair. At last she straightens up and pulls away. Her face is blotchy and her warpaint is a mess, but that horrible bleak anger is gone from her eyes. Now she just looks sad, and tired. "Thank you," she sighs. "I really needed that."

"I can tell." Kammis reaches out to wipe away the worst of the mess from Trelle's cheeks, but stops as Trelle's eyes widen in horror.

"Oh no." Trelle touches the place where her cheek rested. Kammis glances down to see smears of black on the front of her silk robes. "I ruined your nice clothes."

"It's okay." Kammis wipes the rest of the smudged warpaint from Trelle's face with the edge of one sleeve, then snaps her fingers. Her robes glimmer with light and settle again, pristine and perfect.

"Oh," Trelle sighs, and Kammis can see that there's still unicorn blood streaked across her bracers, dried silver and glinting like glass. She doesn't know if a cleaning spell would work on unicorn blood, and she decides not to try. There are some things, even some wounds, that shouldn't be erased; she knows that now.

 

  **vi.** ** _illusion_**

Sometimes it’s easy to believe that this can go on forever. After a battle, or wrapped up in each other in a tent hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, Kammis can start to understand Trelle’s unshakeable faith in their future together. When Trelle talks about the wedding and all the years after, it feels possible; Kammis can imagine herself in a different world, one where she traded away her family and her name, abdicated her responsibility and her heritage and caused the scandal of the millennium by running away to live in blissful anonymity somewhere with an Everdeep elf.

That world is open to her. She’s standing on the threshold, and all she has to do to step over is to send a message back to her father back in the Feywild.

She spends a lot of time composing that message in her head, all the while knowing that she’ll never send it. She is, ultimately, Brall Rivendorn’s child; if there’s a way to be Brall Rivendorn’s child and Trelle Surestep’s fiancée, she hasn’t found it yet.

(But she will. She is determined, and no problem can last long once Kammis Rivendorn devotes herself to it with such burning dedication. In the meantime, she tries to breathe through the gnawing, nauseous guilt, those long nights when Trelle falls asleep draped over her lap and she rests one hand between Trelle’s shoulderblades, feeling the steady rise and fall of her breathing, wondering whether she could ever give up that sound, even for every secret of the summoner’s art she could uncover someday, even for her family.)

Somewhere north of the Whitecrag mountains Trelle goes hunting in the beginning of a blizzard and comes down with a fever that knocks her off her feet for nearly a week. The blizzard moves in over them, and as the snow builds up around the walls of their little tent it’s easy to believe that the world beyond the mountains has been wiped clean away, that the mountains themselves are only visual illusions, tricks of shadow on snow, and the entire plane is empty except for the storm and the two of them, warm in the heart of infinite ice. Trelle is too drowsy to chafe at being confined for so long; for the first three days she’s content to do nothing but sleep and drink the tea that Kammis brews on the pile of magically heated quartz crystals they’re using for a fire. On the fourth day Trelle is mostly awake, and even finds enough energy to sit up in her nest of blankets and stare at Kammis writing in her journal. Partly as a way to coax Trelle into eating, Kammis decides to conduct a series of experiments in arcane baking. Their supplies are piecemeal and the results are inconclusive, but it’s the most relaxing problem Kammis has worked on since she came to the natural world.

“The thermodynamic interface needs tweaking,” Kammis explains as Trelle cautiously nibbles on an overcooked pastry. “Crystal has a different arcane conduction than metal or wood, and of course there are variances between different kinds of crystal. I think an array of quartz and jasper might be able to spread the heat more evenly, and if we built it on a ley-line it wouldn’t need conventional fuel.”

“We should open a bakery,” Trelle says. She leans heavily against Kammis’ shoulder and closes her eyes, still drained and dizzy from the fever. “We could find a nice ley-line somewhere and you could handle all the magic, and I’d be in charge of, I don’t know, berries and stuff.”

“Decoration,” Kammis says, and she can see it clearly; on the edge of the Everdeep maybe, somewhere frequented by humans with money and arcane components as well as bands of hungry, curious elves on patrol or returning from distant lands. An open-air crystal array for the actual baking, with some kind of roofed table for displaying rows and rows of cakes decorated with berry-juice pigments and shaped like Feywild flowers. A garden for herbs, and baskets of fresh-picked berries brought from the forest, and a house – what kind of house, she has no idea. It’ll take some effort to design a house that Trelle won’t feel trapped in and that Kammis will recognize as an actual habitable structure. They’ll have to start from scratch…

Trelle nuzzles into her shoulder and Kammis realizes that she’s falling asleep. “Hey,” she says softly. Trelle mumbles without waking up. Kammis presses a kiss to her forehead, satisfied that her temperature is going down. In a day or two she’ll have her strength back, and they’ll be able to dig their way out of the freezing drifts of snow and get back onto the road that will take them down out of the mountains, into the world again. 

She thinks about the bakery again much later, through the long months and years she spends wandering the Feywild, alone on the other side of hope. By then she can clearly see that it would never have worked. The Rivendorns would have come looking for their lost heir; Trelle would have found out about the web of lies Kammis had built as the foundation for her life in the natural world; the elves of the Everdeep would have rejected an eladrin in their midst and exiled Trelle from her family. It had been a foolish hope.

With the clarity that disaster affords her, Kammis sees that it was all a fool’s hope from the beginning, and she should never have let herself be carried away. Of course creatures whose own minds subject them to fanciful visions every night would be susceptible to such things. An eladrin should know better than to chase dreams.

 

 **vii.** **_abjuration_ **

After Ket goes over to sit with Orem there's only Randus and Torq in the blanket pile, both dead asleep and adding their bass and baritone snores to the cacophony of the Summer Canopy's nocturnal denizens. Trelle chooses a spot a little removed from them and burrows into the pile, hollowing out a place for Kammis beside her. She's at least discreet enough to wait until they're both under blankets before she drapes an arm over Kammis' waist.

Her eyes are still red and puffy from crying. Kammis rests a hand on her cheek, wiping away a smudge of warpaint with her thumb. "You should get some rest," she says. "You must be exhausted."

"Yeah," Trelle says, and kisses her. It's soft and sweet and, for Trelle, remarkably restrained, but just the brush of her lips knocks the wind out of Kammis. She'd half-forgotten what kissing Trelle feels like. It had been easier to forget than to spend every solitary moment in Whitestone lovesick and yearning, and Kammis is no less good at lying to herself than to the people she loves.

Trelle pulls away and Kammis can see the exhaustion in her face like a shadow, a more than physical weariness. If they were truly alone and she had the freedom to look, she knows she would find plenty of new scars under Trelle's armor. But she's here, warm and breathing, having torn her way through three demi-planes to get back to this, the warm hollow in the blankets and their bodies pressed together under the leaves and stars.

A burning, stinging pain, like a spray of scalding water, clenches around her heart; she thinks it might be regret, until she looks down and sees Trelle's cold iron medallion resting on the bare skin above the neckline of her dress.

Trelle quickly tucks the medallion inside her shirt. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, and trails her fingers over the red mark it left, stark and glaring on Kammis' pale skin but already fading. "Does it hurt?"

"A little." Even after the mark is gone Kammis can still feel an ache behind her sternum, a tightness in her throat. Easier to think of it all as effects of the cold iron. She lifts Trelle's hand from her chest and kisses the bow-calloused palm, then folds Trelle's fingers over hers and brushes her lips against the split and roughened knuckles. "It's alright. Get some sleep."

Trelle's eyes are already closing. Kammis pulls her close and rests her lips against Trelle's forehead, waiting for Trelle's breathing to slow and even out. She knows she can't afford to stay here for too long; Trelle will snuggle close and latch on in her sleep, and it won't do for her father to find them so intimately entwined. But after a year of nights spent meditating in a cold practical bedchamber alone, she can't bear to give up a few more moments of Trelle's bony elbow digging into her hip,  Trelle's legs tangled with hers even through three layers of blankets, Trelle's soft snoring in her ear.

 

 **viii.** **_transmutation_ **

Hendron officiates at three weddings in the first week. Despite their grief or because of it, the eladrin newly returned to the Cerulean Grove are more aware than their ancestors had ever been of the drive to new life, to growth and celebration. The Spring Wood puts down new roots and showers them with gaudy, alluring, dangerous flowers; the eladrin work long grueling days dismantling the apparatus of Spud's rule and spend their nights dancing. The first wedding is a young couple born in the Astral Sea, who'd been waiting to make their fortunes and solidify their careers and don't see any reason for waiting any longer. No one can see any reasons for waiting. The future is imminent, the need pressing, for community and companionship and life, new life, any life. The second ceremony is between a daughter of the Shimmerwing family, traditionally elemental mages, and the son of a disgraced alchemist. The third is between Brall Rivendorn's gnome manservant and a gnome barmaid from Shal'ai.

Kammis dances at every wedding. Partly as a reproach to Orem, who's shut himself up in gloom and isolation. Partly because her status as a Rivendorn gives legitimacy to even the wildest pairing. Mostly because she knows Trelle would love this, would love everything -- the tents raised by magic in the amethyst ruins of Spud's keep like the halves of a geode, the magelights and will-o-wisp choruses, the stately grandeur of the words and the simplicity of conjured banquets eaten by starlight in the open meadows. She dances traditional courtly steps that she learned as a child and never got to teach Trelle, dances with whatever proper eladrin lads and lasses want to spend a few moments basking in the glow of a Rivendorn, knowing that by doing it she's keeping Trelle close, paying homage to their love, to all love, to love in the midst of ruin and love that springs anew.

The Whitestone contingent is sent for. Althea makes it plain to Brall that some of the young people among them will surely want to be married, too -- and that they might find it more meaningful to be blessed by their Wizard Protector than by a priest. "Captain Crystalcastle had his eye on a young man -- a Glimmerdim cousin, I recall. They were restrained by some concerns about financial standing, but I can't imagine that would hold much weight anymore," she says one evening over tea. "It might be worthwhile to prepare some remarks."

Brall Rivendorn looks at his wife, then at his children. Orem stares gloomily at the table, unhearing. Kammis meets her father's eyes, and doesn't bother to hide her extreme pleasure at knowing that any objections he could possibly have raised would now sound ridiculous.

"Very well," Brall says at last, and goes back to his scrolls.

On the thirtieth day Kammis is approached by Aurelie Leafshadow, a young woman from a family of little note. They had been classmates at the Cerulean Academy. "I don't know where my family is," she says. "I don't know if any of them are still alive." She's been in the natural world studying abjuration magic, waiting to learn enough that she could come back and make a name for herself in the Spring Wood, waiting for her family to send for her, waiting for the wisdom that comes with age. "I don't want to wait anymore," she says, and holds out her hand to another woman, who steps up and takes it. "We don't want to wait."

Aurelie asks Kammis to sing at her wedding to Imizelle Silvershaper, an archivist without any arcane qualifications to speak of. It's a position of honor usually given to sisters or close friends. Kammis hasn't seen Aurelie in ten years and has never met Imizelle before, but she accepts without hesitation.

Brall Rivendorn watches quietly and without expression as Hendron joins the hands of two women and Kammis stands beside them, singing the ancient blessings wishing them long life and happiness. When the song is over, Kammis touches her forehead to Aurelie's, then to Imizelle's. She'll invite them to her family's tent for dinner, she thinks. The world is changed, and we are changing with it. She glances at her father as she steps back to her place in the audience, knowing that he'll see the look for what it is: a challenge.

Kammis and Master Rivendorn spend the entirety of the next day disassembling a complex of crystal arrays in the remains of one of Spud's towers, side by side, passing delicate tools back and forth, not speaking much besides technical commentary on the demands of the work. Until Brall detaches a spool of silver wire from an agate disc and says, "The elf. She seems…capable."

Kammis takes the agate from him and sets it aside to be drained of power, not trusting herself to speak right away. She lets a moment pass in silence, then says, "She is."

"Good," Brall responds absently. "That's…good."

Kammis smiles.


End file.
